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BREAK POINT

Michael Shea

This title first published in Great Britain 2001 by SEVERN HOUSE

PUBLISHERS LTD Originally published 1982 as Tomorrow's Men.

Preview

Four o'clock on a late September afternoon and the leaden sky hung

heavy over the west of the capital. Here and there, despondent clusters of

pedestrian activity spawned around the remaining ill-stocked shops and

street-markets. Visitors from the recent past would have found a

disturbing absence of traffic; for security reasons as much as because the

stringent petrol rationing, few private cars were permitted in central

London, while, by the kerb-sides, lay the mangled and vandalised relics of

a more prosperous age. What traffic noise there was was engendered by

the police and nation security forces, the scout cars of the riot troops, the

screaming ambulances and the fire engines whose sirens constantly

interrupted the sullen tranquillity. Where it still existed, public transport

consisted of elderly, slow-moving Leyland buses with their windows

covered in mesh as guard against missiles. Additionally, by night, the food

lorries came into the centre of the capital in convoy, guarded doubly

against hijacking and common looting.

At a corner of the Old Kent Road, by a church that stood in

abandonment by God and man, the remains of a Jaguar lay askew, as if in

some obscene mechanical coupling with the shell of a humble Ford

Cortina that was crushed beneath it. Close by, a squad of tattooed and

shaven-headed Paramilitary lads caught a young Pakistani woman and

were playing with her. She was crying but not struggling too much, since

the men were fairly good-natured. Watched and spurred on with cat-calls

by their colleagues, three of them were on the point of dragging her in

through the broken church door when a black Mercedes pulled in fiercely

alongside the littered pavement. A few yards behind it, a back-up

Mercedes, over-filled with heavies, stopped and waited with its engine

running. The Commander, a powerful bull of a man with the scars of some

not so ancient street battle thrashed in deep scarlet across his forehead,

jumped out. Two bodyguards emerged after him. All three men wore the

familiar black leather topcoats, each with a Union Jack smartly stitched to

the upper right sleeve, the symbol of the United Action Movement.

'Let that Paki go. No fraternisation. You know the rule,' the Commander

bellowed. 'No more damned fun and games for you three. For a week,

d'you hear? No parades; no night raids; membership-card duties at hq.'

The three men stood silently to attention as the Commander berated

them. The man's voice was powerfully staccato, the words abrasive, but

the accent still carried traces of elitist, upper-class vowel sounds. The

other Paramils who had automatically lined up in a squad, dressed off to

the left in threes, smart in their brushed grey denim uniforms. The Paki

girl had taken her chance and disappeared, torn dress clutched around

her nakedness. If there were any spectators watching the scene, they were

well hidden.

'Who's in charge?'

'I am, Sir,' one of the men, a tight little Cockney responded.

'Jeffries, isn't it?'

'Yes, Sir.'

The Commander crossed over to him and, in a gesture of basic but

effective power, swiped him across the face with the back of his hand.

Jeffries flinched but otherwise did not move. 'You're no longer in charge of

this squad, Jeffries. I won't have indiscipline. Lucky you're still listed.'

'Sir.'

'We pick precise targets for Number Seven Command. You do only as

you're told. I won't have indiscriminate hooliganism. We've a job to do.

Concentrate on essentials.' The voice maintained its clipped, unyielding

inflection.

'Sir.'

'Your schedule? What is it?'

'Commie picket line at the photo processing lab.'

'Damn you, Jeffries. Get over there. The Riot Unit is outnumbered. At

the double. Commandeer a bus if you have to, d'you hear?'

'Sir. At once, Sir.'

The same day; ten minutes to midnight and a different scene. The heavy

afternoon sky had broken into a violent drenching thunderstorm which

had eventually rolled itself out. The air was clear and fresh, the trees

drippingly revived, the ground soft and treacherous underfoot.

The rambling mock-Tudor house stood well back from the edge of

Ealing Common. Barbed wire and mesh fencing topped the high garden

walls, floodlights illuminated the neatly kept garden and a remarkable

array of aerials bedecked the roof. Inside the house itself and to the right

of the front door was the cloakroom that served as a guardroom. A large

street-map of central London, stubbed with multi-coloured position pins,

occupied one entire wall of the little room and on another was a series of

party banners proclaiming eternal vigilance against the threat of a

Communist take-over. 'If it happened,' one bold-type poster questioned,

'could you look your son in the eye and tell him that you did

nothing—nothing to prevent it?' On the third wall, beside the mirror

which hung over the cracked washbasin, was sellotaped a large, defiant

photograph of the Commander, taken against the background of a

triumphant Union Jack.

Two Paramils were on duty in the room, or supposed to be, for one was

asleep and the other had taken too many measures from a bottle of looted

whisky. From a portable radio came soft mood music. One of the three

telephones rang.

'Headquarters Number Seven Command? Recce squad reporting. All

quiet. No sign of reprisal groups,' said the voice at the other end. 'Tell the

Commander . . .'

'That you, Bert? Bert, isn't it?' The guard's words were only slightly

slurred. His colleague stirred softly in the battered arm-chair, but slept on.

'Hey — it's you, Geoff? You've got a cushy number tonight . . . Fuckin'

good punch up that. We showed those Commie bastards what loyalty

means. They won't show their faces at that picket line again.'

'The cops. The frigging comrades are saying the cops were on our side,

that they stood by, watched us do it. Just saw their spokesman on the TV .

. .'

'Forty of 'em hospitalised. Lucky it wasn't busier at the mortuary. We

don't need no cops' help.'

'Maybe it's frigging true though . . .'

'Maybe. They don't like them Commie bastards neither. No way do

they.'

There was a pause.

'See you, Bert.'

'See you, Geoff. Hey, how's the Big Boy tonight? Living it up, is he? Any

spare birds up there?'

'I don't want no talk like that,' the guard was suddenly aggressive. 'Talk

gets around.'

'Sorry, Geoff. Hey, did you get your mitts on some of that Scotch? Fancy

that store leaving all that booze on the shelves. Serves 'em right, eh?'

There was a pause.

'Night, Bert.'

'No offence, Geoff?'

'No offence, Bert.'

In a comfortable room upstairs, behind locked and sound-proofed

double doors, the Commander was entertaining. The heavy, tightly drawn

curtains discreetly hid the steel shutters that were permanently barred

over the windows, and the only visible sign of outside tensions was the

warning light and alarm buzzer over the doorway.

In his towelling bathrobe, the Commander's guest looked much less

impressive than on a television screen or on the floor of the House of

Commons. Now he was an intent spectator. Of what it was difficult to see

with all the intertwining, but there were four or five girls on the floor in

front of him, doing what they were doing in style.

'Discreet, are they?' whispered the Minister nervously sipping at a

straight malt and pulling his robe close around an ever-increasing paunch.

'Well paid,' said the Commander. 'And we have additional Safeguards

...'

'I'm sure you have,' said the Minister softly. 'All doubtless

tax-deductible.'

'Take your pick. I'll have the rest.' The scar tissue across the

Commander's forehead gleamed alternately white and crimson.

Outside, in deep shadows cast by the sodden, vandalised trees of the

common, the man whom Fleet Street and the television commentators

had nicknamed 'The Brother', to match his opponent, the Commander's

title, stood waiting. With him were thirty hand-picked men.

His real name, which few used or even knew, was Paul Verity, Verity the

enigma. Borstal boy, Workers' Revolutionary Party, trade union militant,

'the idealist with the burning mission', the leader writers said. Yet they

always failed to explain or come to grips with the mission, limited as they

were by the terms of traditional political jargon. Paul Verity was too much

of an individual to be a Communist, certainly too much of a loner to be a

'brother' to anyone other than in name. But one thing he had was

leadership. It was a peculiar charismatic quality in him that quelled

argument and inspired loyalty though never affection. What the

Commander achieved by violence and his own forms of discipline the

Brother obtained by less dramatic but more effective means. The one was

a bear with a cudgel, the other had feminine strengths, a vixen, with

stiletto claws and eyes that were equally deadly. In more law-abiding

times neither man would have ranked higher than a street-gang leader,

with only the other and society itself to fight. Now it was different. To each

had been given that most dangerous and emotive of all weapons, a cause;

for each, that cause was backed by a wider national organisation that

invested both of them with even more power and influence, particularly in

the London area.

Paul Verity stood still, the hood of a dark anorak framing his thin,

hyper-alert face. He and his men waited one hour, then a second. A scout

party reported the arrival of the girls and of an unidentified man in a

Government Humber. At twelve thirty the men moved, quietly, unhurried,

taking their pace from the man who led them. They had prepared their

ground well. They knew from their mole which wall, which alarm switch,

which wire to cut, which key, which door. In their black face masks and

overalls, they looked like nothing more than dancing shadows as they

crossed the well-tended lawn. The guard, Geoff, along with his sleeping

partner, was pulped with iron bars and bicycle chains. It was a little too

noisily done and the Commander and his guest were able to get away by

Michael Shea - Break Point.pdf

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